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The Top 10 Reasons Why The eBay Partner Networks PPC Affiliate Program is No Good

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eBay Partner Network Logo10. When eBay’s affiliate program changed from a straight up affiliate program to a PPC program it became not about helping all of their affiliates make more money but eBay more money.

9. Since making the change to a PPC based model the amount of traffic to eBay has dropped to less than Amazon’s for the first time since eBay passed Amazon. This is not good news for eBay as it happened the month before Christmas. Could this just be a coincidence that 10 million less unique visitors visited eBay in the same month as the PPC structure was implemented? Probably not. Its all those beginner to novice affiliate marketers taking their web traffic and referring it somewhere else.

8. The goal is to reward good affiliate marketers with higher PPC earnings but how can the affiliate marketer know what you think is good traffic and whats not? Isn’t a sale good enough? How many companies pay their employees for bringing customers into the door and not making a sale? The answer is zero. I could only imagine a boss saying “Hey good job on bringing in 1000 customers today and NOT making a sale. We are going to give you a raise.”

7. Nothing makes a affiliate marketer more angry then looking into the transactions that occured and seeing something that they would have earned $25 with on the old way and now earning $0. How could it be bad traffic if the end result is a sale?

6. People go where the money is at. When the money they use to be earning through the affiliate program is not as good then why stay?

5. Does eBay think they are the only good affiliate program around because there are hundreds of thousands of products available? Maybe. What it means now is that affiliate marketers are going to have to team up with specific companies to make sales and not just a online shopping mall. With hundreds available it should not be hard to do.

4. Who really wins here? Does eBay make more money? I don’t see how. They are getting less people sent to their site to buy stuff. Less transactions means less revenues from listing fees. How can less be more when you only paid out when a sale was made to an affiliate.

3. The eBay affiliate program is now a joke. They have now turned away the very people who loved their website and made it into what it is. It went from making people into entrepreneurs to now making people into a employee. Affiliate marketers don’t work for eBay. You don’t give them a 401k, health benefits, or pay them a salary. You only reward them on a sale. If anything, you should want more affiliate marketers and less salaried employees.

2. Does eBay know that it does not produce anything? All you are eBay is a forum for listing products. It is already becoming too expensive to list products on your site as your fees are high. With this in mind, many people are choosing to build their own websites to sell their products on. What about all of those garage sellers from back in the day? Many choose to list it on Craigslist first as its FREE and easy to do. How much longer does eBay think they can get by on brand recognition alone? Ask companies like GM how its working for them and they actually produce something. I wonder how much lower the eBay stock price will go with these revenue deterring practices.

1. Transperency. eBay has made the affiliate program into a guessing game. Before it was pretty simple. Send traffic to eBay and if that person buys something you get a % of the revenue. How do we know whats good traffic or not? What does it matter? Hopefully eBay will stop acting like the U.S Government by hiding secrets from the people that make it what it is.

The Top 10 Reasons To Join The Build A Niche Store Guide Contest

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10. When you join the Build A Niche Store Guide Contest you are being entered into a free contest where a professional webmaster is giving a money making website.

9. Mark Hansen is the internet marketing guru who is giving away the site and he has been in the business for over 10 years interneting it up. You can find him at his flagship site called TheNicheStoreBuilder.

8. Based on Mark’s experience he thinks that the website he is creating about golf putters will bring in over $400 a month. Even if you hate golf you cannot hate $400.

7. The tactics he is using to build the website are based on the e-book called the Number One Way To Make Money Online which was written by two very successful internet marketers.

6. The guide was written off of the success of the software Kelvin and Adam created called the Build A Niche Store software which pulls listings from eBay of your choice that you can display on your site. When somebody goes through your site and buys you earn a affiliate commission.

5. Mark has already spent over $100 on building content to the site and its not done yet.

4. When the site is all done it will probably be better than any site you have in your portfolio.

3. Who does not want an extra $400 a month going into their pocket for doing nothing?

2. You will learn more from joining the rss feed on his website then any other marketer out there.

1. Who said there was no such thing as a free lunch? Well, your not getting lunch but $400 a month will more than cover the bill.

The Top 10 Reasons Why Sirius Satellite Radios Auto Renew/Cancellation Policy Is Bad

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1. When people sign up for a service like satellite radio they sign up for a certain time period such as a year or year and a half. At the end of the time period it is supposed to shut off, not keep on going while Sirius continues to bill.

2. When you sign up for Sirius they send you a welcome letter stating the terms of the service. Nobody reads them because the sales staff informs you that you are paying for the set time period and that’s it. No where in the sales presentation do they say about auto renewing. The welcome letter is more of a formality then stating the obvious. We know what we bought, how much we paid, and for how long. Why would we need to read the pack if everything was stated to us in the first place?

3. Lets say that you do read the welcome letter and are informed about the auto renewal policy but forget about it over the year or two you had the service and do not call in to cancel. Of course it is your fault as you are not keeping up your deal of the bargain.

4. Most people who are introduced to satellite radio services are done so when they lease a car. Ford in particular has an agreement with Sirius that the first 6 months of the lease include it for free. At the end of that time period you can either continue it by paying or let it turn off. Since you did not agree to something with Sirius it automatically gets shut off the day you hit 6 months of having the car. The agreement is between Ford and Sirius, not you.

5. During those 6 months you get use to having uninterrupted music and hundreds of choices. You end up liking it so much that you see no need to bring cd’s or your iPod on road trips anymore. The $10 a month does not seem like that much and since you can play it on your computer at home you ante up the money and either pay for it in whole for the rest of your lease or by month.

6. When it is time to turn in your car lease you will start getting notices on you radio saying it is time to renew the subscription and it even shows the phone # on it. You can either call and pay up or do nothing as you are turning the car in and getting something else assuming that when you turn it in everything is all squared because you paid for it in full.

7. Sirius has the policy that if you do not call in to cancel they have the right to continue billing your credit card that is on file. If there is no credit card then they start sending you bills. You will get a bill in the mail saying you owe money now with a late fee on it. Of course this confuses you as you paid for a certain time period and either forget about the policy or never read the welcome letter because their was no need to except to find out what stations played the music you like.

Sirius Satellite Radio Policy8. If you do not pay the first bill, Sirius writes off the debt and sends it to a collection company. Of course you will be confused as I was to hear a call from a collection agency as I keep excellent record of my finances. I was informed that I owed $31 to Sirius for not paying my last two bills which I should not have had in the first place as the service was shut off and the car was turned in.

9. A quick phone call (45 minutes on hold) to the customer service center (which I think is in the Bahamas) should get to the bottom of this. What they tell you is that the terms of the welcome pack said they were going to keep billing but since there was no credit card on file they kept accruing a balance. Bills were sent but were thrown out because why would they keep billing as my year and a half I paid ahead of time for was up? There was nothing they could do now as the debt was sold. Yup, a $31 bill being sent to collections to ding up my credit report.

10. In the end it made sense to pay the $31 for a service I never used as it was not worth my time to fight it and let it jack up my credit report. But who is the loser here? Is it me? The consumer who thought everything was explained to and did his part but never read about a policy where he had to call in to cancel (I never received a call asking if I wanted to re-new)? Or is it Sirius? The company who provided a outstanding service. One so good that it became normal to skip the local radio stations and go right to the satellite stations and then listen to at home on my computer. The loser is Sirius. The policy should be that there is no auto-renew policy. If you pay in advance then at the end of your contract the service gets shut off. This way when the person goes to turn it on and hears nothing they know that they need to call in to renew. Sirius can flip a on/off switch at anytime. By continuing to bill and then sending it to collections (w/o a phone call) will mess up a credit report. Even worse is that its over $31. Sirius could get rid of all the employees (saving $$$ on salaries) who work at that call center. Even the manager I talked to (Joshua) agreed that it is a bad policy. I asked him how many times a day they get a call like mine and he said “too many.” Unfortunately I can never go back to Sirius Satellite Radio again. Not because of the product or the service, but because of a bad policy and a lack of communication on their part.